Only the cover is new. These pages represent my father's "retirement"
project: family history, local history, personal prose and poetry, and
transcribing books of his grandfather, M.I. McCreight. Dad died in a car
accident on February 28, 2009, along with my sister Amy. Years ago he
had asked me to carry on as the family historian when he was gone, so
here goes. I have endeavored to replicate his web pages faithfully in
content, and closely in appearance.

Thanks to a blogger named Steve (for whom I can find no email address to
formally ask permission to quote him), I've discovered who "Many Coups"
actually was. When the Plains buffalo herds were being decimated (as
recorded in Buffalo Bone Days), Many Coups was attempting to
help his people, the Crow, survive the subtraction of all that they had
known and relied upon in life. The real Many Coups went on to represent the Native
Americans in Washington, DC, and promoted education and farming to those
remaining tribal groups. Not surprising that Dad borrowed the name
for his own internet communications.

A true conservationist of the land, Dad's career involved helping
farmers with land usage for crops and ponds. Surely there is a
connection to his grandfather's beliefs in conservation of natural
resources, as shown in a speech given by McCreight, transcribed in these
stories, and by M.I.'s role in creating Cook Forest State Park.

Dad is sorely missed. Thankfully he left us many of his thoughts and
experiences to remember him by - and even an autobiographical web page,
last updated the same month he died (A Kworum of One). The
Stumpf forebears populate a section on Stumpf family history (below). Luckily
for us, Mom's family history, too, is
chronicled -- in Fursterbild. A more extensive family
tree can be found on the Ancestry site (.com) under member
yatiri2.

To the right are links to a selection of Dad's writings and the writings
of various family members, and of his veteran friends who also fought in
WWII. Photos and other illustrations can be found throughout. Several
of the titles are books by M.I. McCreight, who was my dad's
grandfather.